Chapter 4 - THE BRICKYARD
Rain lashed against the windshield of the SUV as Daniel drove them an hour north of the city. He didn't take them to a luxury hotel or one of his other properties. He drove them to a place that didn't exist on any corporate ledger.
Decades ago, before the billions, Daniel’s father had been a bricklayer. When his father died, Daniel had quietly bought the abandoned brickyard where his dad used to work. It was a crumbling industrial site, but the foreman’s office had been converted into a functional, off-the-grid cabin.
No Wi-Fi. No smart thermostats. No security cameras that could be hacked.
Daniel carried Mia inside and laid her on the worn leather sofa, while Rosa settled Tomas onto a cot in the back room. The rain hammered against the tin roof, a rhythmic drumming that offered a strange sense of comfort.
Daniel sat at the scarred wooden table and pulled his encrypted company laptop from his bag. He plugged in the silver flash drive Mia had been carrying.
Password Required.
He tried his master admin password. Access Denied.
He tried the company's default encryption keys. Access Denied.
"Damn it," Daniel muttered, dragging a hand down his tired face. If Marcus and Conrad were terrified of what was on this drive, it held the key to destroying the Harbor Commons deal for good. Marcus had called it an "ecological survey."
Rosa emerged from the back room, carrying two mugs of instant coffee. She set one down in front of Daniel. She looked at the flashing red Access Denied screen.
"It's locked," Daniel explained, rubbing his temples. "I need the passcode. If Isabella set it, it could be anything. Her birthday, Conrad's anniversary..."
"Isabella didn't set it," Rosa said quietly.
Daniel looked up. "How do you know?"
"Because of the label." Rosa pointed a trembling finger at the screen. The drive's volume name was displayed in small letters in the corner of the window: H-COMMONS-77.
"Seventy-seven," Rosa murmured. "Do you remember when Isabella came to the house last week? She was furious. She was screaming into her phone in the hallway. I was dusting the credenza, so I heard her. She was yelling at your CFO, Mr. Marcus."
Daniel leaned forward. "What did she say?"
"She said, 'My father is a fool. He used the old site codes from seventy-seven. If Daniel figures out the site code, the whole thing is over.'" Rosa frowned. "I didn't know what it meant, so I ignored it."
Daniel stared at the screen. Seventy-seven.
He typed 1977 into the password box.
Access Denied.
He typed Conrad1977.
Access Denied.
"What happened in 1977?" Daniel whispered to himself. He stood up and began pacing the small wooden floorboards. "Conrad Vaughn started his first real estate firm in 1985. The Harbor Commons land was purchased by the city in 1990..."
Daniel stopped dead in his tracks.
He turned slowly to look at the exposed brick walls of the old foreman's office. He walked over to the wall and ran his fingers over the rough, red clay. Etched into the corner of the bottom brick, barely visible under years of grime, was a date.
1977.
"My father," Daniel breathed.
"What?" Rosa asked.
"My father worked at a chemical plant on the East Side before he became a bricklayer," Daniel said, his voice rising with realization. "The plant shut down in 1977 because of illegal dumping. The city paved over it ten years later."
Daniel rushed back to the laptop. He pulled up the digital blueprints for the Harbor Commons mega-project. He overlaid the map with the historical zoning maps of the city.
The Harbor Commons site—the $280 million luxury development Conrad was forcing Daniel to build—was sitting exactly on top of the old 1977 chemical plant.
Daniel typed the old name of the chemical plant into the password box on the flash drive: OAKRIDGE77.
The screen turned green. Access Granted.
Files flooded the screen. Soil samples. Toxicity reports. Internal emails between Conrad Vaughn and corrupt city officials. The land wasn't just unstable; it was a toxic time bomb. If Daniel built the development, the Reyes Corporation would be legally responsible for the billion-dollar cleanup and the inevitable lawsuits when families got sick.
Conrad wasn't trying to merge with Daniel. He was trying to bankrupt him and use him as a human shield for a thirty-year-old crime.
Suddenly, the roar of a car engine cut through the sound of the rain outside.
Daniel slammed the laptop shut. He grabbed the heavy iron fire poker from beside the woodstove.
Headlights swept across the cabin windows. A car door slammed. Footsteps splashed through the mud, marching heavily toward the front door.
Daniel positioned himself behind the door, gripping the iron iron tightly.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Daniel swung the door open, raising the weapon.
Standing in the freezing rain, shivering uncontrollably, was Isabella. She wasn't wearing her designer silk or her flawless makeup. She was wearing a torn sweater. Her lip was split, bleeding down her chin, and a dark purple bruise was blooming across her left cheekbone.
May you like
She looked at the iron bar in Daniel’s hand, then up at his eyes.
"He knows you're here, Daniel," she whispered, her voice cracking. "My father is coming. And he has a gun."
